My Perfect Cognate (häftad, eng)

My Perfect Cognate interrogates the connections and contrasts at the sharp edges of her in-betweens: violence and softness, motherhood and isolation, the border between the United States and Mexico, where the author and her mother were often stopped, interrogatedWritten from the depths of severe post-partum depression, Natalie Scenters-Zapico searches for a language that can hold both personal and communal pain. When Spanish and English seem insufficient, she leans on the connection between the two languages: the cognate.

Originally a way to document lineage through the mother, the cognate provides a possible bridge of understanding. Yet, for every cognate that works as a mirror reflection, the wave of a border agent’s hand, a stamped passport, a false cognate that works as an expired visa, a rejected biometric scan, a port of entry shut down by violent legislation.

Natalie Scenters-Zapico mines the depths of linguistic cognate theory to write poems that go beyond translation and mistranslation. We find hope in a translingual landscape that breaks open borders.